From idiots savants to Albert Einstein: A brain-algorithmic explanation of savant and everyday performance

In this journal, Spitz (New Ideas in Psychology, 13, 167–182, 1995) proposed that calendar-calculating savants achieved their astonishing performances by concentrative efforts that developed “smart” unconscious brain algorithms. In this paper I offer argument and examples that support Spitz's contentions. Within the context of a brain algorithm based position I call Neurological Positivism (NP), I argue that all problem solving performances, whether those of savants or anyone else (including Albert Einstein), are the result of common self-organizing, self-referential algorithmic dynamics that connect the powerful algorithms of the phylogenetic brain (for example, those of perception) with algorithmic retoolments developed during ontogeny. Savant performances are described as abnormal outcomes of the evolutionary-driven transformation of phylogenetic algorithms into cultural-level problems. Albert Einstein's experiential account of personal discovery, which he termed intuition, is offered as corroborative support for NP's position that cultural-level performance arises from perceptual algorithms. It is concluded that culture is driven into existence by evolutionary dynamics that are immanent in the phylogenetic brain.     

The emergence of brain and mind amid chaos through maximum‐power evolution

A new brain algorithm based Neurological Positivism (NP) is described that is reconcilable with emergent evolution. The maximum‐power evolution of brain and mind amid chaos is described. It is proposed that with the maximum‐power evolution of mind (a) a chaotic/fractal dynamical algorithmic isomorphy among world, brain, and mind is erected, and (b) we witness the origin of the mechanism of evolutionary epistemology—the origin of knowing energy. The maximum‐power evolution of symbols is described as resulting from features of chaos and fractal geometry. Finally, a neurological positivistic explanation of the workability of mathematics in the real world is proposed.     

Love and Power,and the Development of the Brain,Mind, and Agency

In drawing on my own research and collaborative work with Karl Pribram, I show that love (affective attachment) and power (social control) play a central role in psychosocial evolution. When these relations are coupled in a self-regulating system of cooperative interactions, brain growth is stimulated, mind and agency develop, and stable forms of collective social organization are generated. Focusing on the endogenous dynamics of social collectives, the article is organized in four parts. (A "social collective" is defined as a durable arrangement of relations among two or more individuals that is distinguished by shared membership and collaboration in relation to a common function or goal.) Part I summarizes evidence from developmental neuropsychology and social science to show that stable psychosocial organization, across the human life span, is associated with social interaction organized along two dimensions. One dimension involves love, positive affective attachment, and the second involves power, social regulation of the aroused affective energy. Part II draws on Piaget's theory of cooperation and Bradley and Pribrams' theory of communication to describe how mind and agency are generated, and how stable organization is produced, respectively, from the relations involved in the arousal and regulation of affective energy. Combining elements of the two theories, Part III presents a sketch of a holographic model of collective organization in which goal-directed behavior is generated by a feed-forward process involving imaging and information processing of interaction along the two dimensions. Part IV shows how the model accounts for the emergence of human agency within the context of a more general evolutionary theory, such as Laszlo's. The article concludes with a discussion of my approach for building a "fully human theory of evolution."     

Gerald Edelman’s Project: How Gerald Edelman’s Theory of Consciousness Completes Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and Provides a Basis for a Brain-Based Psychoanalytic Perspective

In this article we consider Nobel Prize Winner Gerald Edelman’s remarkable contribution to the understanding of human evolution, and our own application of Edelman’s theory to a brain-based psychoanalytic perspective we have devised. Edelman’s paradigm setting out his theory of the evolution of mind, brain, and consciousness concerns not only mankind’s evolution over all of time, but also the evolution of each and every individual over and within his single lifetime. Edelman contends that human beings, as individuals, and not only as the taxonomic category from which they sprang, have a separate and distinct evolutionary history of their own, and it is especially from within Edelman’s theoretical assumptions about the evolution of the individual per se that our own psychoanalytic understanding of theory and practice derives.     

Christian Mysticism and Science: The Phenomenological Dimension

Abstract

In this second of three papers, I identify three fundamental phenomenological themes that have informed Christian mystical theology and then explore how these themes might be given further understanding via natural science. The first theme, detachment, minimizes any association with the secular world in favor of humility and openness to God. Detachment is chosen in consciousness using a resonant global workspace linked through the hippocampus to reconstructions of both declarative and emotional memory. The second theme, infused contemplation, is concerned with God's top-down revelation to the recollected mind of the mystic. The resulting top-down resonance creates an appropriate theory of mind for infused contemplation, as the human mind is now more perfectly linked with the mind of God. The third theme is mystical union, which both theology and science claim occurs within consciousness. Starting in intentional consciousness, the mystic undergoes an unmediated surrender beyond cognition to non-intentional consciousness. Because God fills the center of our being, a resonating luminosity can thus occur arising from the union of God and self within pure consciousness.     

A motor theory of how consciousness within language evolution led to mathematical cognition: origin of mathematics in the brain

Invariance associated with Pribram's (1971, 1991) motor images-of-achievement (imaged consequences of movement) is proposed to provide the fundamental neurophysiological basis for mathematical cognition [Pribram, K. (1971) Languages of the brain. Englewood Cliffs. NJ: Prentice-Hall. Pribram, K. (1991) Brain and perception: holonomy and structure in figural processing Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.] A three-part theory is outlined. First, linguistic representations of self-consciousness were instantiated through the evolutionary process of distinguishing one's own vocalizations from those of others. It is proposed that consciousness was imparted to these linguistic representations from an already corticalized neuromatrix described by Melzack (1992) [Melzack, R. (1992, April) Phantom limbs. Scientific American, 266, 120–126.] Second, language evolved from motoric images-of-achievement associated with vocalization arising in the pre-Rolandic and inferior parietal cortex. Third, abstractive language processing that decomposes higher-order motor engrams into invariant image-schemas provides the basis for the awareness of pattern that constitutes mathematical cognition. It is concluded that mathematical cognition obtained an evolutionary connection with the physical world by way of the brain's somatic systems.     

Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience in Dialogue: Commentary on Paper by Arnold H. Modell

Arnold H. Modell has been engaged in an ongoing effort to advance psychoanalysis as well as to integrate psychoanalytic theory and relevant domains of science, particularly neuroscience, with psychoanalytic practice. He has been articulating a biology and construction of meaning and the role of metaphor as he attempts to understand the relationship between mind and brain. Modell strives to understanding how “matter becomes imagination,” as well as the relationship between the first-person psychological unconscious and the third-person neurophysiological unconscious. The latter, according to Modell, is interpreted by a personal “autobiographical self” and given meaning. This discussion of Modell's theories will include historical and contemporary attempts to understand how “matter becomes imagination.” Although there is a growing neuroscience research base for articulating the reverse, i. e., “how imagination becomes matter,” the present author will focus on the project Modell h as placed before himself and his audience. The role of consciousness in the brain-mind interface, mirror neuron systems and intersubjectivity will be discussed. Clinically, the role of trauma's effects on memory and metaphor as well as the defensive functions of non-relatedness and counter-dependency will be examined within the wider context of the very rich and subjectively meaningful journey of matter becoming imagination.     

Encounters with the Religious Imagination and the Emergence of Creativity

Ervin Laszlo's notion of the interrelationship between evolution and creativity as being intrinsic to universal life processes has been influential to the biological and social sciences. Central to Laszlo's thinking is the notion of convergence in biological and social systems that are posited on creative complexity. In this article, I employ Laszlo's concept of creativity in relation to the human religious imagination. Cross-cultural studies of the religious imagination examine the architecture of human consciousness and ways of knowing. These two areas are interlinked and generate new kinds of knowledge and understanding of the self and the world. In this way, the religious imagination is a means of generating new possibilities of mind and consciousness.     

MORALITY AND NATURE: EVOLUTIONARY CHALLENGES TO CHRISTIAN ETHICS

Christian ethics accentuates in manifold ways the unique character of human nature. Personalists believe that the mind is never reducible to material and physical substance. The human person is presented as the supreme principle, based on arguments referring to free‐willed actions, the immateriality of both the divine spirit and the reflexive capacity, intersubjectivity and self‐consciousness. But since Darwin, evolutionary biology slowly instructs us that morality roots in dispositions that are programmed by evolution into our nature. Historically, Thomas Huxley, “Darwin's bulldog,” agreed with Darwin on almost everything, except for his gradualist position on moral behavior. Huxley's “saltationism” has recently been characterized by Frans de Waal as “a veneer theory of morality.” Does this mark the end of a period of presenting morality as only the fruit of socialization processes (nurture) and as having nothing in common with nature? Does it necessarily imply a corrosion of personalist views on the human being or do Christian ethics have to become familiar again with their ancient roots?     

Creatively Intelligent: Post-Industrial Organizations and Intellectually Impaired Bureaucracies

Today's successful organizations function much like creatively intelligent, individual brain-mind systems. Unfortunately, many of the bureaucratic organizations we inherited from the industrial era function like individual minds of lesser intelligence. A metaphorical comparison of our organizations with the human brain-mind system illuminates organizational configurations and behaviors that promote success in today's turbulent economic and sociopolitical conditions. Both the creatively intelligent post-industrial organization and the highly developed human brain-mind are integrated clusters of dynamically evolving subsystems. Their functional dynamism enables them to perceive patterns in chaos, and to create effective long-term plans derived from those patterns. Imagine the organization in which you work as a giant brain. The human brain-mind system consists of a number of subsystems that work together to produce our thoughts, feelings, and actions. In a similar way, most of our institutions and businesses consist of departments that work together to create and distribute products or services. A wide variety of thought processes and behaviors are common to both the human brain-mind and the typical organization. Some of these include planning, analysis, abstract thought, emotional responses, ritualistic behaviors, and creative idea generation. A creatively intelligent person produces and integrates a blend of these thought processes and actions that is best suited to success in his or her environment. In a similar manner, today's successful organizations generate optimal blends of thought processes and actions that enable them to flourish in the midst of uncertain conditions. We can identify opportunities for greater organizational creativity and efficiency by using a brain metaphor to analyze the nature of today's most effective organizations. This paper compares the human brain-mind system to the organizations that are surviving and thriving in today's turbulent socioeconomic climate. There are some remarkable parallels. In many ways, today's most effective organizations closely mirror the functioning of the optimally developed human brain-mind. Similarly, our least effective organizations operate much like individual minds of lesser creative intelligence. The brain metaphor suggests that, in today's post-industrial organizational climate, some institutions and businesses are suffering from brain damage while others are on their way to becoming creatively intelligent geniuses.     

On the current status of the evolutionary theory of behavior dynamics

The evolutionary theory of behavior dynamics is a complexity theory that instantiates the Darwinian principles of selection, reproduction, and mutation in a genetic algorithm. The algorithm is used to animate artificial organisms that behave continuously in time and can be placed in any experimental environment. The present paper is an update on the status of the theory. It includes a summary of the evidence supporting the theory, a list of the theory's untested predictions, and a discussion of how the algorithmic operations of the theory may correspond to material reality. Based on the evidence reviewed here, the evolutionary theory appears to be a strong candidate for a comprehensive theory of adaptive behavior.     

The evolution of mandler's conceptual primitives (image-schemas) as neural mechanisms for space-time simulation structures

The purpose of this article is to describe parallels between Mandler's theory of conceptual development in infancy, and my theory of the maximum-power principle evolution of the neuro-algorithmic organization of the brain and cultural-level mental models. A maximum power principle prey-predator scenario depicts the dynamic selective origins of neuro-algorithms underlying Mandler's various image-schemas (conceptual primitives). It is proposed that (a) image-schemas are inherited space-time simulation structures that originate in cerebellar state estimating functions which spread to the mapping systems of the cerebrum; (b) image-schemas do not come about as the result of perceptual analytic abstractive processes as Mandler has proposed, but undergo refinement in ontogeny through experience-expectant development involving perceptual analysis; (c) Mandler's image-schemas are “state-primitives” fed forward from the cerebellum to provide tracking routines for perceptual analysis, and rapid simulations constituting representation, prediction, and control; and (d) vicarious trial and error (VTE) can be interpreted as pragmatic vector simulation using image-schematic simulation structures. A scenario connecting image-schemas with Pleistocene era auditory-vocal system evolution which supports Mandler's developmental connection between image-schemas and language is proposed. It is concluded that Mandler's theory of conceptual development is essentially correct. However, it is suggested that the further articulation of Mandler's theory would benefit from parallel statement of the evolution of underlying brain mechanisms.     

Rape and evolutionary psychology: a critique of Thornhill and Palmer's theory

In this article, we present a critical evaluation of Thornhill and Palmer's [(2000). Rape: a natural history. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.] evolutionary theory of rape. This theory attempts to explain rape in terms of evolutionary theory and asserts that rape is either directly or indirectly associated with inherited mechanisms that increased our ancestors' reproductive success. We first provide an introduction and overview of some of the fundamental concepts in the field of evolutionary psychology (EP) and then summarize the major elements of Thornhill and Palmer's theory. Thornhill and Palmer offer two main lines of argument in support of their theory — a positive and a negative argument. The positive argument involves the development of an explicit case for the coherency, scope, empirical adequacy, and explanatory depth of their evolutionary account of rape. The negative argument relies upon refuting what Thornhill and Palmer call the “standard social science model” (SSSM) of rape. The present paper advances some general criticisms of Thornhill and Palmer's theory and then specifically addresses both their positive and negative arguments. We conclude that Thornhill and Palmer have not established that their evolutionary theory of rape is a better theory than social science explanations. At best, their argument presents a strong case for the important, but not exclusive, role of biological factors in the etiology of rape and gender relationships. At this point in time, there are too many unanswered questions concerning the nature of the relevant adaptations and the contribution of environmental and cultural factors to conclude that evolutionary theories are sufficient to explain sexual aggression.     

Toward an Evolution of Mind: Implications for the Faithful?

Ever since its inception, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection has challenged assumptions about the nature of humankind and human institutions. It did not escape the notice of Darwin, sympathetic allies, or hostile contemporaries that his theory had profound implications for ethics and theology. In this paper I review some current sociobiological hypotheses about the mind that are based on the theory that the human mind is primarily a social tool. Many researchers now believe that both complex human within-group cooperation and between-group competition are the anvils that may have shaped the modules of the mind. Given this evolutionary theory of the mind, the Darwinian challenge to theism, ethics, and faith is now being relaunched with a vengeance. However, I suggest that modern physics, evolutionary biology, and cognitive science all seem to fit nicely into the atheistic and phenomenological niche defined by Buddhism.     

Theory learning as stochastic search in the language of thought

We present an algorithmic model for the development of children's intuitive theories within a hierarchical Bayesian framework, where theories are described as sets of logical laws generated by a probabilistic context-free grammar. We contrast our approach with connectionist and other emergentist approaches to modeling cognitive development. While their subsymbolic representations provide a smooth error surface that supports efficient gradient-based learning, our symbolic representations are better suited to capturing children's intuitive theories but give rise to a harder learning problem, which can only be solved by exploratory search. Our algorithm attempts to discover the theory that best explains a set of observed data by performing stochastic search at two levels of abstraction: an outer loop in the space of theories and an inner loop in the space of explanations or models generated by each theory given a particular dataset. We show that this stochastic search is capable of learning appropriate theories in several everyday domains and discuss its dynamics in the context of empirical studies of children's learning.     

具身心智对进化心理学的质疑与挑战

具身-生成心智倡导生命与认知的深刻连续性,它重新定义了自然选择,强调身体和生命活动对认知的关键意义,并指出每一个人都是经过文化适应的主体。它在心智进化的本质、认知的核心工作假设、人类本性与文化,以及基因、身体、生命活动与认知的关系等问题上都有着完全不同于进化心理学的理解,并对后者提出了质疑和挑战。     

Neurological positivism's explanation of learning

Vandervert proposes a radical, dynamic systems (chaos theory) based neuroepistemological position known as neurological positivism (NP). He postulates a brain algorithmic based epistemology that integrates world, brain, and mind as a chaotic/fractal dynamical phenomena, with the essential algorithmic energy designs of brains deriving from the geometry of survival in maximum-power evolution time spaces. Within this framework, ‘learning’ is seen as the process of transforming the algorithmic organisations of the brain into isomorphic neuro-algorithmic restructuring of subcircuitry during ontogeny. Learning is furthermore seen as playing an essential part in the development of both algorithmic concept modelling and problem solving mechanisms that together enable an individual to maximise the input of survival-related energy. Expanding on this it is proposed that learning is a dynamical, hierarchical, and unique phenomenon that increases in conceptual scope and sophistication over time, together with such things as creativity, learning styles, emotion and personality emanating from this process.     

A dyadic model of consciousness

The proposed model for consciousness, called a dyadic model, is based upon reexamination of traditional thought structures in the light of modern experimental evidence from a number of scientific fields. It is an evolutionary cosmological model using energy and information as fundamental concepts. It proposes that the antecedent attributes of anthropic consciousness find their roots in the field of zero point quantum potential which gave rise to the Big Bang. In this model consciousness has both a fundamental aspect and an evolutionary aspect in the same sense that quantized energy manifests fundamentally as wave/particles and is observed in more complex form as molecular matter. Physical existence evolved through natural process into ever more complex organizations of matter; so also must anthropic consciousness have evolved from more fundamental antecedent characteristics. The dyadic model proposes a scenario for this evolution that corresponds to the appearance of the universe we seem to inhabit.